I applied for a Halifax Clarity Reward credit card with benefits of £5 cashback per month subject to a minimum spend of £300 per month. My application was approved so I switched immediately, but was later told I would not qualify for this deal.

GK South Wales

As there was uncertainty as to how long the offer would be available, you switched immediately. This meant losing £19 of cashback points that you have accrued on the card you were transferring away from: a Halifax Platinum cashback credit card. This cashback was due to be redeemed later that year.

But then you weren’t given the cashback that became due on the new card. On querying this you were told the card no longer attracted this benefit. You pointed out that at no time had you been informed about any change. You were offered £15 for goodwill, which was then increased to £50. This you did not accept.

You were told you had signed the terms and conditions of a different type of card. Even though you had queried this at the time and had been reassured the paperwork was indeed right, now the provider asserted it was not possible either to upgrade to a Clarity Reward card or reinstate your previous arrangements.

Clarity was therefore very much a missing ingredient in this transfer.

My involvement led to Halifax reviewing the case and giving you £60, the equivalent of the first 12 months reward payments you might have had, and £100 by way of apology for the trouble caused.

You said this was not good enough and went to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). While a Halifax employee coming to this for the first time was assembling information for the FOS she realised the cashback could have been applied to the account after all. She then actioned this, albeit without informing either of us.

When it came to look into this, the FOS concluded that the payments offered to date were fair and reasonable, particularly as Halifax had now taken steps to put you back in the position you would have been in had it not provided you with incorrect information in the first place.

Meanwhile you have been using a card with a different institution for cashback. Now you know the cashback facility is on the Halifax card you will spend just over £300 a month on it to get the cashback and then revert to the card with the other provider to acquire cashback points on that.

Adding together £500 for the unnecessary excursion to the FOS, the duplicated sum for the first year’s cashback and £100 for goodwill Halifax is footing a £660 bill for something which could so easily have been resolved within the time it takes to blink an eye.

The bank has different rules for cashback cards now, although it still pays this benefit to those who took out such a card before the changes were made.